This invention pertains to an aircraft and support vehicle ground-control system and related methodology for controlling the travel of aircraft and other vehicles, such as fuel trucks, on the grounds of an airport. In particular, it relates to such a system and methodology which, in the case of aircraft is based upon the transmission to the crew on board an aircraft of a full preliminary packet of ground-travel instructions. Support ground vehicles are monitored continually, and as will be explained below, are furnished with much of the same kind of information provided to an aircraft. Ground-control instructions can then be followed and monitored without the necessity, except in certain special circumstances which will be described below, of requiring any further real-time voice communication between an aircraft""s crew, or the operator of a ground vehicle, and an airport ground controller.
Referring first now to aircraft control, under widespread current practice of implementing aircraft ground control, such control typically takes place via back-and-forth radio transmissions between the crew on board an aircraft and a ground controller. It is well known in the art that it is a very challenging task for a ground controller, especially in the usual setting where each ground controller may have responsibility for controlling, essentially simultaneously, up to as many as two dozen or more aircraft on the ground. In this presently typical environment, the airwaves utilized by aircraft crews and ground-control personnel are filled, substantially throughout the entireties of aircraft travel from starting points to destinations, with a dense content of cross-communications, with respect to which confusion, misunderstandings and errors frequently, and sometimes dangerously, arise. Further, most current radio-voice-active control is implemented with communication equipment which operates in a simplex, channel-blocking mannerxe2x80x94a practice which allows only a single aircraft crew at a time to converse with a ground controller. In such a setting, the attention of a ground controller is effectively demanded, substantially simultaneously (but on a crowded one-by-one basis) from multiple aircraft, in a manner requiring that controller to converse, perhaps frequently, with each of several different aircraft crews throughout the entirety of the ground travels of those aircraft which are in a ground-controlled situation.
When one takes the above into account, the well-known difficulty that can sometimes occur with respect to understanding exactly what someone has said over a dense radio link, along with a recognition that high volumes of international traffic aircraft crews whose native languages may be one of many different languages, the opportunity for difficult problems to arise is significant. At the very least, the usual ground-control environment today is filled with stress.
Added to the clear complexity of current ground controller to aircraft crew communication, also to be concerned with is the necessity for ground controllers to control the coordinated positioning and movement of ground-support vehicles. This further requirement significantly complicates and densities ground-control communications.
According to a preferred embodiment of the system of this invention, and of the preferred methodology for implementing it, and as such relates to aircraft, at a point in time which precedes actual aircraft travel on the ground, from a starting point to a destination point, there is a preliminary delivery of a full package of assembled, aircraft-specific-tailored, instructional ground-travel information. This delivery is made (under computer control) from a ground controller to the crew on board an aircraft. The full, assembled package requires no direct voice-to-voice communication between a ground controller and any crew member within an aircraft.
Thereafter, this package of full instructions is available on board an aircraft throughout that aircraft""s ground travel activity, and without necessarily requiring any later, ongoing, back-and-forth verbal communication between a ground controller and members in an aircraft""s crew.
Made available through computer structures that are operating essentially under the control of one or more ground controllers, an instructional package that is delivered according to this invention to the crew on board an aircraft results from the assembly of a package of instructions drawn in data groups selected from a predefined and elaborate ground-control database that has been established. This database includes prerecorded audio files, visual-data files, text files and perhaps other files, which can provide a full instructional package for each controlled aircraftxe2x80x94a package fully relating to a specific travel route chosen for the aircraft by a ground controller. Audio files in this database are preferably voice files, and these files may be in any one of a number of different languages to include detailed and explicit verbal directions for movement between predefined travel waypoints. The detail and rich content of such aural files are not limited by today""s need to forecast clipped brevity over real-time, live, crowded air channels. The mentioned visual-data files contain map representations of the grounds of a specific airport, marked with waypoints and travel routes between such points. Regarding such waypoints and routes, specific routes, or paths, between adjacent selected waypoints are characterized with instructions regarding, inter alia, speed of travel, lateral dimensions of the travel path and spatial coordinate information that can relate aircraft position to exact location on and along a route between waypoints.
On board an aircraft equipped to implement the system and methodology of this invention is computer structure which is designed to receive and deliver the transmitted information appropriately to the aircraft""s crew. Also onboard such an aircraft is any one of a number of different spatial position-locating systems, such as the well known GPS systems.
Controlled ground vehicle are similarly equipped to practice the present invention with appropriate system equipment constructed in accordance with the invention, and appropriate position-locating structure. Unlike controlled aircraft, of course, ground vehicles receive (where necessary) delivered instructional packages based upon a host of different stunting and end points for travel on an airport""s grounds, and also in relation to assigned, normal xe2x80x9czonesxe2x80x9d for operation.
Various specific features and advantages offered by the invention will become more apparent as the detailed description which now follows is read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. The system and methodology of the invention are principally illustrated and described hereinbelow with reference (for illustration purposes) to aircraft.